hystat
Welcome to my channel. I am a red seal licensed Heavy Equipment Technician (421A Ontario) since 1989, and I recently got my EGSA Journeyman Technician certificate. I am an educator. I am not servicing equipment professionally and I do not compete with my colleagues or graduates, therefore this channel is about general education and gives a sampling of the kind of lessons one can expect in a trade related college program. This channel isn't for me helping you fix a specific machine for free. Please hire a pro.
hystat
Hip Tribute I'm a part of played in Parry Sound last fall. More shows on the horizon.
1 year ago | [YT] | 0
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hystat
ARE HEAVY EQUIPMENT TECHNICIANS PART OF "THE TRADES"?
I think there's a danger in lumping motive power trades in with "the trades", a term which often conjures up images of "the building trades": carpentry, plumbing, roofing... I offer that heavy equipment technicians are doing work that is as different from those trades as the work of airline pilots, health care professionals, or race car drivers.
The difference, in my opinion, is the level of curiosity needed throughout one's career. After 10 years as a plumber, how much is left to learn? Maybe PEX came out some years ago. But 95% of toilets still flush basically the same as when I was a kid in the 70's as far as I can tell. How many weeks of training per year are required to continue to be on the cutting edge of carpentry technology? I suggest one week probably.. maybe two weeks. Sure there are new tools and new products but that's on the job training. That's inherent in any technical job. An hour here, an hour there type training.
Contrast that to when I was a Caterpillar dealer technician. Cat told us the lifespan of any model of machine was 39 months! By the time a machine hit the dealer lot, it was obsolete from an engineering standpoint. New engines, hydraulic systems, electronics, powertrain designs, were already being developed for that model's replacement. Just one new model in the product line may warrant 24 or 30 hours of training for technicians to understand how to service and diagnose it's issues. Multiply that by the number of technicians and families of machines. For dealerships that represent more than one manufacturer's equipment, the amount of new technology a tech is exposed to annually is staggering.
So when we recruit and try to foster awareness of Heavy Equipment repair as a possible career choice, are we doing a decent job of targeting students that are of a drastically different mindset of those pursuing "the trades"?
Is this more like "Mechanical Engineering but you get really dirty" ? What do we call it? How do we present it to youth to tap into the curiosity of the right young people?
1 year ago | [YT] | 5
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